I remember the day my father broke. It was the day he stopped writing.

He used to write down everything he saw. Different types of people, the places we passed through, the times that villages got away, and the times they didn’t. He used to say that the surest sign of there being a future is someone writing down the present for the future to read.

It was the fall of G’haar.

It was one of the few large settlements left, a place of refuge and trade that drew in groups of refugees from all over both sides of the Northern Passage. Its high walls kept away the raiders and most of the smaller Dulaan. People felt safe, and that was its most priceless commodity.

There were three of them that day. Like most things involving Norsu, it happened fast. With legs and appendages as long as the hills, it's no wonder that they were on top of us before most had any idea what was happening. In this world, however, it was something we had all seen before.

We were lucky. We were outside the city, on our way back from a trip to the base of the mountains to find some basic goods to trade. Meat and wood mostly. Unfortunately, this meant we had front-row seats to the destruction of G’haar.

There were three of them. One resembled a giant scorpion, except one made of metal that sent scintillating beams of light from its tail. Another was vaguely shaped like a woman with an elongated and narrow head, no hair, and seemed to bend and flow as it moved almost like water. Its arms were tipped with enormous blades. The third was exactly like a man, only on a colossal scale. He swung a giant club that was tipped with what looked to be the remains of a bell tower. The bell must have still been in there somewhere because of the loud gonging sound it made when it was swung.

The city might as well not have even been there. The Norsu often didn't seem to even notice the ant-like creatures that were sent scattering in their wake. Though you didn't want to be in the path of one who did wish to take notice. These three however were locked in a titanic skirmish. The city was just another part of the landscape.

They stomped and crashed their weapons into each other. The sounds were deafening and the concussion was enough to burst the eardrums of the closest bystanders. Their feet and legs smashed through walls and buildings and reduced them to dust. Beams of light and flocks of what looked like birds with streaks of steam behind them missed their targets and exploded, turning whole districts into glass and raging infernos. The giant man beast bodyslammed the strange woman construct into the ground, leveling the central marketplace.

We didn't even run. We stood rooted to the ground, mesmerized at the carnage as we watched everything and everyone we had come to know be turned into a hellscape.

It was over in minutes. The body of the man-shaped Norsu was in a pile of blood and bone just outside what used to be the front gates, his head was a mile away in what passed for farmland. The echoes of the continued clash of the other two rang out from the dunes to the north.

We went into the city. To look for survivors, to gather supplies, or to just pay respects. Maybe all three. I don't remember much of what we did. I do remember what we saw. Nothing could make those images go away.

Dust. Blood-streaked spots on the road where people once stood, atomized by the crash of a weapon or the passing might of a boulder. Piles of bone and red mush where feet caught an unlucky tradesmen. Hot glass in spirals of rock, wood, bone, and blood.

There were survivors, if you could call them that. Many simply stood where they were, blood running from their ears, their mouths sagged in shock. Some lay on the ground, dead of either shock or their own hand. Others muttered and walked in circles. Some sat in a fetal submission on the ground and wailed for relatives now gone, their minds broken by what it had bore witness to.

We gathered a few things into our cart. Food, some burlap bags, and some firewood. There wasn't much else to be found. There was nothing else that could be done.

We started towards the Passage. I asked my father where we would go. I suggested that maybe we go back south and see if perhaps with the change of season the Middle Lands had fared better. Or perhaps make for the sea coast, long rumored to have been largely spared the worst of the ravages the rest of the lands heaved with.

My father didn't speak. He guided the horse that pulled our cart. He walked in a slow and steady gait as the horse's hooves clopped down what was left of the main road. His eyes were unfocused, his pupils wide and unseeing. I don't think he wanted to see it. I know I didn't want to see it right then either.

It took us two days to get far enough away that we didn't smell the stench of glass and burning hair. It was the third day before we stopped seeing smoke. We passed others on the road. They looked at us and without asking they knew what had happened. Many who had looked hopeful at being close to a secure haven now let their heads hang loose on their shoulders.

We never stayed with them long. Sometimes they turned and followed us for a time. Other times we made camp close by to one another. No one spoke. It was an unwritten law of these lands that those who had just escaped a close encounter with Norsu were best left alone. There wasn't much to say anyway. All anyone could think about what they had seen and heard. And no one wanted to relive that. If we could help it, no one wanted to remember it either.

It wasn't the first village or town we had escaped from. We were fortunate, or unfortunate to have been here before. My father has always slowly come back after several days and would show me his hopeful smile again. I never understood how he did it, how he could bring himself to hope one more time. To think of the next village, the next town, the next place.

This time was different. I was destined to never learn how he might have done it before because now he would never do it again. He didn't speak for two weeks. Simple hand gestures sufficed for what communication we needed. When next he spoke, his voice sounded hoarse from misuse.

We go south.

Every morning after, when we put out the campfire and strapped the horse to the cart, it was the only three words he would gift me with.

We go south.

For safety. For hope. Because it was the direction that made some sense or that came to his lips the easiest. I didn't know yet. His hoarse voice and sunken eyes suggested that what was behind them might not be willing or able to plan for the future anymore anyway.

My father never wrote again.